Assessing Brazil’s Cerrado agricultural miracle

Brazil’s emergence as a primary global agricultural producer is often credited to production expansion into soils of the Brazilian savannah or Cerrado. These soils are, however, deficient in important nutrients and prone to degradation, requiring input-intensive processes that suggest a low level of productive efficiency. Employing a sequence of agricultural censuses and a biome approach for characterizing agricultural zones, the present study evaluates the Cerrado’s total factor productivity growth and productive potential. The analysis highlights the resource cost of Brazil’s “Cerrado Miracle,” the role of paved road infrastructure in expanding production opportunities, and the significant production gains that the Cerrado may yet achieve. Results suggest a substantial productivity gap between the Cerrado’s most efficient and average producers, implying that Cerrado production might well be further boosted if average producers succeed in adopting the technologies and management practices of the more efficient operators. More generally, and to the extent the Cerrado model is generalizable elsewhere, agricultural development of the world’s savannahs, such as Sub-Saharan Africa’s Guinea regions, into breadbaskets will be expensive in terms of material inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, depending for their success therefore on the real prices of these inputs.     

China’s Confidence

With the spread of the global financial turmoil, China is under growing tension from its large population, limited resource, environment problems, and losing its competitive edge in the world as exports are being driven down by shrinking demand abroad as well as higher costs. Despite challenges, China still has a great potential to develop its domestic demand and a solid financial system. Under such circumstance, we should enhance confidence. It is imperative for us to perceive favorable conditions and positive factors for acting against the negative outside environment and promoting development in a scientific way.     

China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: What is the Welfare Standard?

China??s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) sets forth the country??s antitrust enforcement policies. We investigate the welfare standard that the AML seeks to maximize by examining both its stated language and, via revealed preference, the antitrust actions taken by the Anti-Monopoly Enforcement Authority.     

China’s business system and its future trajectory

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - We present a sketch of the existing Chinese business system and discuss what we see as the main challenges in its future evolution. We argue that China will...     

Passing the food and agricultural R&D buck? The United States and China

The global geographical balance of food and agricultural R&D spending is shifting, characterized by a declining U.S. share and a rising middle-income-country share, propelled heavily by the rapid rise of spending in China. Based on our newly compiled data, we estimate that China now outspends the United States on both public and private food and agricultural research on a purchasing power parity basis. The public-private orientation of the research has also changed markedly, with the private sector now accounting for around two-thirds of the food and agricultural R&D spending total in both China and the United States. Our estimates indicate that China’s private sector tilts heavily towards post-farm R&D activities, whereas the U.S. private sector is split more evenly between on-farm and post-farm spending. While the intensity of Chinese investment in food and agricultural R&D (relative to agricultural GDP) is beginning to grow, it still lags well behind the food and agricultural R&D investment intensities of the United States and other higher-income Asian countries (e.g., Japan and South Korea). The development regularities we reveal in the longer-run trends are indicative of future R&D investment patterns with potentially profound long-run implications for the size, shape and accessibility of the global stocks of scientific knowledge that underpin food and agricultural sectors worldwide.     

How does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity? Evidence from Ethiopia

This study uses household-level panel data on smallholder farmers in Ethiopia to estimate how rural population density (RPD) affects agricultural intensification and productivity. Our results suggest that higher RPD is associated with smaller farm sizes, and has a positive effect on input demand, represented by increased fertilizer use per hectare. Overall, increased input use does not lead to a corresponding increase in staple crop yields, and thus farm income declines as population density increases. This suggests a situation where farmers in areas of high RPD may be stuck in place, unable to sustainably intensify in the face of rising RPD and declining farm sizes.     

How does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity? Evidence from Malawi

This article uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi to estimate how rural population density impacts agricultural intensification and household well-being. We find that areas of higher population density are associated with smaller farm sizes, lower real agricultural wage rates, and higher real maize prices. Any input intensification that occurs seems to be going to increasing maize yields, as we find no evidence that increases in population density enable farmers to increase gross value of crop output per hectare. We also find evidence that households in more densely populated areas increasingly rely on off-farm income to earn a living, but there appears to be a rural population density threshold beyond which households can no longer increase off-farm income per capita.     

China’s Antimonopoly Law 2008: An Overview

This article outlines the economic, legal, and political background, general features, main provisions, and enforcement mechanisms of China??s Antimonopoly Law 2008 and describes some early developments in its application.     

Lysine and Price Fixing: How Long? How Severe?

In October 1996 the Archer Daniels Midland Company(ADM) pleaded guilty to criminal price fixing withrespect to sales of lysine and agreed to pay a $70million fine. Earlier, in August 1996 two Japaneseproducers and a Korean producer of lysine had agreedto plead guilty to criminal price fixing charges. Andearlier still, in July 1996 ADM and the two Japanesecompanies settled the civil suits filed by some harmedbuyers by agreeing to pay a sum of $45 million.It is this last event that serves as the focus forthis paper. The adequacy of the settlement amount wasa major area of dispute. Connor (1996, 1997, 1998)has claimed that the trebled damages to lysinepurchasers were an order of magnitude larger. Crucialto Connor's conclusions are his assumptions as to thetime period during which the conspiracy had an effecton prices and the but for price that otherwise wouldhave prevailed in the absence of the conspiracy. Thispaper will argue that Connor substantiallyover-estimated the period of the conspiracy andunder-estimated the but-for price.     

Food sovereignty and agricultural trade policy commitments: How much leeway do West African nations have?

The 2008 food crisis has challenged the political legitimacy and economic efficiency of the liberalization of international agricultural trade. An alternative vision defended by the food sovereignty movement is that long-term food security cannot rely on dependency on food imports, but must be built on the development of domestic production with enough barrier protection to shelter it from world price fluctuations and unfair trading.The purpose of this paper is to look into whether the West African nations can achieve food sovereignty given their various trade commitments and other external constraints. The particularity of our approach is to combine a historical economic analysis with a political approach to food sovereignty and trade commitments.Our results suggest that external brakes on the development of food sovereignty policies are marginal, as the countries still have unused room for manoeuvre to protect their smallholder agriculture under the terms of draft World Trade Organization agreements and Economic Partnership Agreements and under the international financial institutions’ recommendations. Rather the international environment seems to be instrumented by West African states that do not manage to secure a national political consensus to drive structural reforms deemed vital and further the food security of the urban populations over the marginalized rural populations. Recently, the regional integration process has made headway with a common agricultural support and protection policy project that could herald an internal political balance more conducive to food-producing agriculture.     

Cross-National Diffusion Research: What Do We Know and How Certain Are We?

To compete effectively in the global marketplace, marketing managers require insight into how a product gets adopted in different countries. For example, can international marketers identify specific cultural traits that may help them to forecast how quickly a new product will be adopted in a particular country or in a group of somehow related countries? Similarly, can they identify factors that suggest why the adoption process differs among countries?Although these diffusion-related questions address critical issues for international marketing managers, only a few studies have explored cross-national diffusion. To help fill this gap, V. Kumar, Jaishankar Ganesh, and Raj Echambadi present the results of a study that replicates and extends the findings of three previously published studies of cross-national diffusion. Their research aims to replicate four findings from the previous studies: the role of country-specific effects in explaining differences in diffusion parameters, the presence of a lead-lag effect, the use of cultural variables to explain systematically the diffusion patterns across countries, and the merit of country segmentation schemes based on diffusion parameters. They extend the previous research by integrating cross-sectional and time lag variables into a single framework, and they demonstrate how managers can apply this integrated framework for forecasting the diffusion of new products.They replicate the findings from the previous studies by using annual sales data for five product categories (VCRs, microwave ovens, cellular phones, home computers, and CD players) in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The product categories and time periods covered differ from the ones in the previous studies; some overlap exists among the countries in this study and the ones in the previous studies.The findings in this study suggest that country-specific characteristics (for example, cosmopolitanism, mobility, percentage of women in the labor force) are useful for identifying the differences in diffusion patterns across countries and innovations. This study also suggests that the lead-lag effect helps to explain differences in diffusion across countries. Factors that this study identifies as possibly influencing the clustering of countries with similar diffusion patterns include timing of entry, geographical proximity, and cultural or economic similarity.     

How Common Are Bad Bosses?

Bosses play a fundamental role in workplaces. Yet, almost nothing is known about an important and basic question in labor economics and industrial relations. Are the right people promoted to be supervisors, team leaders, and managers? The infamous Peter Principle claims that incompetent bosses are likely to be all around us, but is that true? This article provides the first statistically representative international estimates—taking comparable data on thirty-five nations—of the extent to which employees have “bad bosses.” Using a natural measure, the article calculates that approximately 13 percent of Europe’s workers have a bad boss. Such bosses are most common in large organizations, in organizations without employee-representation committees, in the transport sector, and where workers themselves have no supervisory responsibility. Last, the article offers a practical finding as a potential aid to human resource training and hiring. Contrary to media portrayals, bad bosses are rated least bad on “respect for workers” and worst on their ability to get the job done. Lack of competence, not lack of consideration, appears to be the key problem.     

China’s Textile Industry International Competitive Advantage and Policy Suggestion

Textile industry has long been a pillar to China’s economy thanks to its advantage in factor endowment and market scale. Trade volume of textile sector has increased by 27.11 times during the past 25 years (from the Reform and Opening). In 2005, textile export took up 15.4% of China’s total export and 24.4% of the world’s total export in textile, and the production and export of Chinese textile products are both the largest in the world. Nonetheless, China’s textile industry is facing va…     

Institutional environment and complementary assets: Business strategy in China’s 3G development

This paper develops a framework to assess the influences of institutions and markets on the business strategy of firms in transition economies. We argue that regulatory systems and markets in transition economies are interdependent. Their changing conditions will interact and influence the types of partnerships in new market entry. Using a case study approach based on historical data and interviews, we show how China’s telecommunications industry evolved between 1987 and 2007, and led to the development of a 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications) standard and networks. Our analysis based on the framework explains how regulative elements and market conditions shape the strategic choices of partnerships between domestic and foreign firms when entering China’s 3G market.     

International scientific and technical meetings: why go? who profits?

A growing body of empirical research shows that information which is actually put to use is most often transmitted by personal contact. This article reviews the literature to examine some of the reasons for the importance of personal contact in the transmission of information and then focuses on scientific and technical meetings as an environment designed to facilitate the transmission of information in this way. The review of the literature is included for completeness in Part II of the article. However, it is the foundation on which the empirical research described in Part I is based. Using the author's definition of meeting effectiveness this research shows that the person who is giving the most is also the most effective in gaining and utilizing information.     

The Paradox of Openness: How Product and Patenting Experience Affect R&D Sourcing in China?

External R&D sourcing may help firms compete in an environment characterized by rapid technological changes. Yet, prior studies have produced conflicting findings on how a firm's technological experience affects the extent to which the firm engages in external R&D sourcing. Although many highlight that firms with extensive technological experience are equipped with more technological knowledge, collaborative skills, and absorptive capacity, encouraging greater levels of external R&D, others suggest the opposite due to potential exchange hazards and partnership conflicts. Adopting an external partner's perspective, the current study reconsiders this “paradox of openness” by analyzing how a focal firm's product experience and patenting experience affect an external partner's tendency to provide external R&D services to the focal firm. Specifically, this study explore how a focal firm's knowledge protectiveness and tacitness embedded in its product and patenting experience influences the external partners' motivation for knowledge transfer. This study predicts that a firm's product experience increases the focal firm's external R&D sourcing because it provides high levels of knowledge tacitness and external openness and can encourage external partners to share and exchange knowledge with the focal firm. In contrast, a firm's patenting experience decreases the focal firm's external R&D sourcing because it denotes knowledge explicitness and protectiveness and may discourage external partners to share and exchange knowledge with the focal firm. This study further predicts that patenting experience has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between product experience and external R&D sourcing. Using a data set of 575 high‐tech firms in China, this study finds support for our predictions. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on the knowledge‐based view and technology entrepreneurship in emerging markets.     

Auctions on the Internet: What’s Being Auctioned,and How?

This paper is an economist's guide to auctions on the Internet. It traces the development of online auctions since 1993, and presents data from a comprehensive study of 142 different Internet auction sites. The results describe the transaction volumes, the types of auction mechanisms used, the types of goods auctioned, and the business models employed at the various sites. These new electronic-commerce institutions raise interesting questions for the economic theory of auctions, such as predicting the types of goods to be sold at auction, examining the incentive effects of varying auctioneer fee structures, and identifying the optimal auction formats for online sellers.